


walking backwards

by foxwins



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Coping, Established Relationship, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 08:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxwins/pseuds/foxwins
Summary: In all the months they'd been together, they'd never just… fallen asleep in bed. If they weren't actually sleeping together they kept to their own rooms, Jack claiming that she wiggled too much in her sleep for him to get any rest and her insisting that he always ended up draped around her like a starfish. But apparently not last night. And now she was here, mostly-to-fully clothed in the bedroom, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. // or how Jack and Lula become Jack-and-Lula





	1. not the kind of fool who's gonna sit and sing to you

"So," Dylan starts, "is this like, a thing?"

 

He's looking back and forth between Jack and Lula- the former with some pretty obvious mouth-shaped bruises peppering his neck, the latter in the former's shirt, both with sex-mussed hair and rumpled clothes. Lula takes a sidelong glance at Jack, downs the rest of her coffee, and nods. "Oh yeah."

 

Dylan looks to Jack for confirmation, eyes wary, but the younger magician can only turn his palms up in a mockery of innocence. "Sorry 'bout it," he says, entirely unrepentant. Dylan massages the bridge of his nose and walks out of the kitchenette, but turns back once he's a few yards away.

 

"Just- don't let it affect your performance, okay?"

  
  
"No worries, Dyl," Lula calls after him. "Jack's performance is great. Top of the line. No complaints."

  
  
"Not what I meant, Lula, and you know it."

 

And just like that they're _together_ , or something, easy as that. She curls into his side when they sit next to each other on the couch, he opens car doors for her, she steals every last thing he has in his pockets. Normal couple stuff. But Jack likes it, likes having her steady presence by his side, likes being able to throw his arm around her and press a kiss to her cheek whenever he wants.

 

Jack likes Lula.

 

"I like you."

 

He's staring up at her a few weeks later, head cradled in her lap as she absentmindedly flicks a card up and down in the air, Danny and Dylan arguing in the background, Merritt drinking a scotch on an armchair next to them. It's basically perfect.

 

"I'd hope so," she replies, then sends the card on a sharp arc upwards, in a spiraling path different from the ones previous. Jack takes the hint and snaps his hand out to catch it. "Is this your card?"

 

He turns the card over with a twitch of his fingers. Queen of hearts. "It is indeed." His face crinkles when she bops him on the nose.

 

"Liar. I never asked you to pick a card." She's got one brow arched in mock derision, but her lips are curved into a fond smile.

 

Jack pushes himself into a sitting position and vanishes the card. "Got me there. I'm just trying to please." Leaning in for a kiss, he stops short when a voice cracks out from behind him.

 

Merritt doesn't look up from his magazine as he admonishes them. "Keep it in the pants, kiddos, most of us like their pornography to not involve people that they actually know."

 

"Don't tell me. I don't want to know." Atlas strides over, waving his hand dismissively at Merritt. "We've got a new target."

 

* * *

 

 

"Opal Koizumi. Of KoiTech, obviously." Atlas draws up a picture of a young Asian woman on the tablet in the center of the table. Even in the almost comically high heels she's wearing Jack wouldn't estimate her to be more than a hair over five feet tall.

 

"One of the leading weapons sellers around the world. She designs them herself, and by all accounts she's a prodigy."

 

"Her?" Merritt chuckles disbelievingly. "She looks more like Barbie's conveniently ethnic friend than a weapons mogul. Ow!" He rubs his shoulder where Lula whacked him.

 

"I know it might be hard, Merritt, but don't be sexist and gross," she says. "Chicks can be crazy arms dealers too." Merritt holds up his hands in defeat.

 

"She's a confirmed megalo-and-egomaniac, suspected sociopath, chronic narcissist. You should hear some of her interviews. It's almost funny," Dylan says.

 

"Right," Lula says in a clearly unconvinced voice. "Sociopathy. Funny." Jack has a sudden and horrifying flashback of airplane seats, Walter Mabry, and a knife to Lula's throat. His hands clench and unclench at the memory.

 

"Lula is right. We can't let ourselves underestimate anyone because of appearances. I mean, Mabry looked pretty harmless, but he almost got the better of us." Danny's brow is furrowed as he studies the picture. "Koizumi's a genius, even compared to the other people we've taken on. We're going to have to shore up our weak points."

 

"You know what that means." Lula nods sagely. "Training montage."

 

* * *

 

 

"Not quite-- there-- oh my God, so close-- no, you lost it."

 

Jack rocks back on his heels and grins as Lula sticks her tongue out at him, lockpicks clutched in her hand.  "Koizumi's gonna have some pretty high-end hardware, Lu. Gotta brush up." She rolls her eyes at him in derision.

 

"I can already pick a pair of handcuffs, why are you bothering trying to teach me all this fancy multi-chambered lock shit or whatever?" She huffs, flopping back against the couch in exhaustion. "I miss the good old days when everyone just tied everyone else up, you know?"

 

"And I miss the days where all I had to worry about was stealing cash and scamming tourists," he says lightly, scooching over to sit next to her and watch Dylan school Atlas in knot-tying across the room. She leans her head onto his chest, flicking the lockpicks back and forth through her fingers.

 

"Do you really miss it?" Lula asks, then crinkles her nose. "God, how has Danny made it this far as a magician without being able to tie a proper trucker's hitch, honestly?" she says, a note of disbelief in her voice. "Actually miss your days as a street rapscallion, I mean. The whole Oliver Twist deal." Her eyes don't meet his as she poses the question. It could just be that she'd rather watch their fellow Horsemen argue a few feet away from them or she wants to spare Jack the pressure of eye contact with response to such a fraught question- either way, he's grateful. It's a heavy thought, no matter how light her voice was when she posed it, and it takes him a moment to think of a way to respond.

 

His thumb runs soft circles on her arm as he mulls it over. "No, not really." She shifts against him, waiting for elaboration. "I mean, my mom was nice, I think, but she died when I was little, and then it was just me and my asshole dad for a few years til I managed to get out."

 

"What was she like?" Lula asks suddenly. "Your mom. You said she was nice, but what was she like?"

 

"She was..." Jack pauses, tries to remember. It's been a long time, and he has so few memories of her anyways, but he tries. "Her name was Allison. I think she sang to me a lot, but I can't really remember any of the songs. Just the way I felt when she was singing them. After she died my dad wouldn't ever let me play music in the house."

 

"Dads. Gotta love 'em." She won't look at him, instead choosing to studiously vanish and reappear the picks up her sleeve.

 

"Yeah, that was shitty. I made it out, though, and it sucked for a while but I could have been worse off. At least I was my own man, right? And now I have you guys."

 

_And you. I have you._

 

A lock of her hair gets twisted by his restless fingers. "If we're being honest, I haven't really thought about the times before the Horsemen in a long time. Better things to do, you know?"

 

She's quiet for a moment as she fiddles with the zipper on his jacket. "At least you were doing magic."

 

"In a way, I guess so. Lifting wallets is fun and all, but I was just a nobody kid going nowhere. I wanted to be on a stage. I wanted everyone to see me prove what I could do."

 

"The most famous magician in the world," she says theatrically, trying to dispel the uncomfortable aura of honesty his story has brought. "You know what I thought when I first saw that video about your car crash?"

 

"How could I possibly know that?"

 

Lula rolls her eyes at him. "Rhetorical question. I thought that of all the Horsemen, you were the least likely to be the most famous."

 

"Least likely?" he says, laughing incredulously. He's more than a little grateful for the change in subject, and though he doesn't mention it he's sure she knows. "C'mon, Lu, give me a little credit."

 

"It's true," she defends, laughing along with him. "You know why?" Her fingers walk up the center of his chest, then skip up to poke him in the nose. "It's your face."

 

"My face?" Grinning, he catches her finger before she can dance it away. "Most girls like my face, you know."

 

"You know I'm--"

 

"Not like other girls, I know." She gives him an affirmative nod, lips pressed together in a look of mock seriousness. "But what's wrong with my face?"

 

She slips her hand out of his grip to run the pads of her fingers down his cheekbone. "It's too… I dunno, genuine? Like I look at Danny and I know right away that he's trying to deceive me. But not you."

 

"No way. I'm supposed to be the quiet, mysterious one, remember?" Lula just rolls her eyes. "It's true! All the news articles about us say so. _Jack Wilder, the revenant, the enigma…_ "

 

"Pfft. I looked at you once and I saw a sweet, normal, New York dude. You're an open book. "

 

"I doubt any of us count as normal anymore."

 

"Yeah," she says, "although compared to Merritt and his mind fucking or Danny and his OCD you're normal. Some people might think you're all stoic and shadowy, Mr. Back-From-the-Dead, but I know better."

 

"I think that's more your uncanny ability to read me than any lack of mystique on my part, Lula. You've been in my head since day one." He's a little bemused by the fact that she doesn't seem to realize that she's always been able to see through him better than anyone else, as if just anyone in the crowd could pick through his brain the way she can. "You're special." She looks up him, and for a moment Jack wishes he could see the gears whirring behind those pretty green eyes of hers.

 

 _She is so, so beautiful._ But then she blinks, and the moment is gone.

 

"Can't argue with that one. C'mon," she says, rising and holding her hand out to help him up. "I think Atlas is about to tie his hands together."

 

* * *

 

 

Jack starts leaving presents for her. As much as he loves magic, the dullness of practicing a trick over and over again sets in a few weeks after they get the Koizumi dossier. They all have their own way of staving it off, though- Danny's been doing the Times crossword, Merritt's been spitballing ideas for the title of his autobiography _(_ "Is the _Magnificent Mentalist_ too on the nose? What about _Mastered by Merritt_ as a subtitle?") _,_ and Lula's been raiding Jack's pockets at every given chance. But hotel peanuts and wallets and lockpicks are pretty boring fare, in his professional pickpocket's opinion, so he starts to stock his jacket with little odds and ends. Never anything big. Just little trinkets or scraps that are easy enough to pass off as random pocket debris.

 

Lula takes the bait.

 

"Do you like my hair, Jack?" she teases, fluffing her soft brown curls so he can see the pretty red ribbon he'd picked up earlier tied in a messy bow, tangling her hair more than taming it. He makes a good show of patting his pockets and rolling his eyes as she saunters happily towards him, ribbon untied and held between her fingers. But when she makes a move to hand it back, he twists it back around her wrist and ties in it a crisp bow- perks of being a sleight-  before she can stop him.

 

"Keep it," he says. Lula's brow creases briefly in a strange expression, but she settles with a shrug. The ribbon stays floating around her person for the next few days- wrapped around her wrist, tied in her hair, threaded through a zipper pull, as if she can't figure out quite where she wants it to be.

 

She wears it so often that he doesn't notice it when he's kissing her one night, one hand tangled in her hair and the other playing with the strap of the simple tank dress she's wearing. Lula catches his bottom lip in a light nip and laughs into his mouth when he jumps, letting her tongue slip out to sooth the mark.

 

"Troublemaker," he murmurs against her lips. She pulls back and grins.

 

"You know it." Her busy hands push themselves under his leather jacket, impatiently shove and press in an effort to get it off. Jack obliges her, shrugging off the jacket and pulling off his shirt with it. Lula eyes him appreciatively with an exaggerated leer for a moment, then shimmies out of her dress.

 

Perks of being a magician- Jack's got her bra unsnapped and off within a few seconds. That leaves his hands free to hook his thumbs into her underwear and drag them down as he kneels in front of her, detangling them from her feet as he presses kisses into the insides of her thighs. Distantly, he feels her lean back and reach for something, but he's too lost in thought to register what it might be.

 

Suddenly her hand fists in his hair and tugs him up only to shove him back a few feet. Startled, he looks up at her and--

 

"Holy shit."

 

There's the ribbon: tied crisply around her neck like a Christmas present, with the gift being she's not wearing anything below it. Which he knew already, having helped her divest most of her clothing, but something about the long supple lines of her body broken only by that streak of scarlet is drying his mouth.

 

Somehow, in one smooth motion, she manages to reach forward to unbutton his jeans and shove him backwards to sit down on the bed.

 

Jack is so, so hard.

 

Lula swings her legs around him to plant herself in his lap, the soft fabric of the ribbon glinting in the half-light, and even though he's always been more of a blue kinda guy Jack decides he'd wallpaper the inside of his eyeballs that color if he could.

* * *

 

 

"I'm picturing dark hair, leather jacket, the letter L. L L L L, lu lu lu-- Lula! You're thinking about Lula."

 

"Cheap trick, Merritt." They're mulling over blueprints together, the rest of the Horsemen off on some other task. Which leaves Jack as the sole target of Merritt's inane mind games.

 

"You make it too easy for me, Jackie-boy. When you're not actually boning all you two do is goggle at each other like you wish you were."

 

Jack can't help but pull a face. "Please, never talk about us 'boning' again. I would like to continue to enjoy it."

 

"It's more than that though. Bone!" he shouts suddenly, fingers snapping below Jack's nose. "Bang! Fuck, fornicate, make sweet tender love... love!"

 

Jack's not sure what expression he makes, but it must be telling. Merritt's watching Jack's face raptly, an amused half grin on his lips. "You really like her, don't you?"

 

"Of course I like her. Can we please get back to the blueprints? We need to know this lab complex by next week." Studiously, Jack shuffles the papers he's holding.

 

"Oh, no. You're not getting out of this one. See, your pretty little face just told me that you're uncomfortable with describing you and Lula's relationship as purely physical, meaning that you like our Miss May, maybe even like-like her. And it's obvious that she likes you." Looking altogether too pleased with himself, Merritt rests his chin in his hands. "But you don't know if she _like_ -likes you back."

 

"Can you _please_ stop saying like-like? I'm not eight anymore."

 

"Closer to eight than you are to my age, kiddo."

 

"What do you want from me, Merritt?" Jack snaps, suddenly tired of the older man's questioning. "What answer could I possibly give that would make you happy?"

 

"Woah woah woah, no need to bite," Merritt says with an amused expression. "Seems I've struck a nerve."

 

Jack breathes out hard through his nose, his fingers crumpling the papers in his hands as he avoids eye contact with the older man. Merritt watches him carefully, tracking every microexpression that must be flickering across his face, previously comic expression smoothed into concentration.

 

"Look," Jack says after a tense couple of seconds. "I like Lula. I really do. And it's been really great the past couple of months. But I just-- I don't know where it goes from here, you know? We're not exactly in a situation that's conducive to a normal relationship, and I don't know how she feels about that anyways, so just... lay off it, Merritt."

 

"Your wish is my command." The two men sit in companionable silence for a moment, shuffling the papers around.

 

Merritt breaks the quiet. "This isn't a magic trick, you know. You're not going to be able to figure some clever way to wiggle out of it and get off scot-free. You have to see it through."

 

"I know." Jack pauses, thinks about Lula's smile, nods resolutely.  "I want to."

 

* * *

 

 

"Jaaaack," she says, her voice a soft whine. "Come back here." Lula's sprawled luxuriantly over his bed, dark curls in a halo around her face. One flops over her eyes as she props herself up, and she blows it away with huffy impatience. Her fingers curls in a come-hither, and for a moment Jack is tempted to abandon his teeth-brushing mission to join her.

 

But when she tilts her head to smile at him, it doesn't quite cover the dark circles hanging beneath her eyes, doesn't stop her sleepy yawn. They'd all been running themselves raw for weeks practicing the new tricks, and even Lula's well of hectic energy had a limit. Not that she'd ever admit it. So Jack just nods appeasingly and throws a thumb over his shoulder.

 

"Just let me brush my teeth." She nods, satisfied, and he shuts the bathroom door behind him.

 

He brushes his teeth for one, two minutes, then rinses his mouth and sits down on the cold tile with his back to the door.

 

Three, four, five minutes pass before he stands again. Pressing the door open as quietly as possible, he peeks outside.

 

Lula's fast asleep, curled tightly around a corner of his comforter.

 

 _Knew it_. Jack pads softly over to his bed and insinuates himself next to her, having to shift slightly awkwardly to get his whole body under the comforter. She mumbles sleepily and he freezes, but eventually Lula settles into a more comfortable position beside him.

 

If she's lovely when she's all made up for a camera, she's exquisite now, lashes still long and dark and light freckles peppering her cheeks. But her expression is the most entrancing- smooth and almost innocent.

 

As innocent as she got, at any rate. Jack smooths her messy hair back from her face and drifts to sleep.

 


	2. about stars, girl

Lula comes to slowly, wrapped in a thick comforter. Her head is cradled on something warm but distinctively un-pillowlike, the crick in her neck screaming at her to change the angle.

 

Her finger jabs into her not-pillow, and Jack mumbles in his sleep and shifts obligingly.

 

"Hey," he says sleepily.

 

"Hey," she replies, blinking hazily at the light. Stretching luxuriously, she feels a few vertebrae in her back pop as she moves to sit up. Jack's hand catches around her wrist, though, and tugs her back down into his chest.

 

"Too early," he groans. "Come back to sleep."

 

She's inclined to agree for a few soft moments, but eventually the rancid morning taste in her mouth and the scratchy goop in her eyes makes her extricate herself from his grip. Stumbling to the attached bathroom, Lula is stopped by a bewildering realization.

 

She's still wearing clothes. She's still wearing clothes, which means she never took them off, which means that last night she and Jack just flopped into bed and _slept._

 

In all the months they'd been together, they'd never just… fallen asleep in bed. If they weren't actually _sleeping_ together they kept to their own rooms, Jack claiming that she wiggled too much in her sleep for him to get any rest and her insisting that he always ended up draped around her like a starfish.

 

But apparently not last night. And now she was here, mostly-to-fully clothed in the bedroom, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Her hands paw blindly for the cold water tap and she scrubs at her face, washes the crust out of her eyes and rinses the reek out of her mouth.

 

"Lula?" She turns to see Jack propped up on his elbows, and _goodness_ doesn't he fill out that soft black shirt he's wearing well-- _focus, Lula_. "Are you alright?"

 

She turns back and looks at her reflection, hair tangled, face red from the cold, eyes wide with a feeling she can't quite place.

 

"Yeah," she says. "I'm good." She makes her way back to the bed, crawls under the sheets with him again. "You were right; it's too early."

 

He adjusts himself a bit and resumes his steady breathing after a few minutes, but Lula doesn't sleep another wink. Instead she traces absent patterns on Jack's stomach and wonders just exactly what she's going to do about him.

 

* * *

 

 

"You and Jack seem… happy."

 

Lula whips her head around to look at Atlas, then shakes her head. "Oh no. I'm not doing this with you, buddy."

 

"All I did was--"

 

"Danny, you have no idea how real human relationships work. I'm not divulging the details to you so you can awkwardly fumble out some terrible advice." His face does one of those weird twitches, his eyebrows quirking upwards and his mouth pressing shut.

 

"I don't need to know the details. I was just going to say that he really seems to like you."

 

"Yeah, I got that by myself."

 

"Would you stop snapping at me for a moment, Lula, and just listen?" Danny's voice carries a hint of real annoyance. Lula opens her mouth to take another shot at him, then thinks better of it.

 

"Go for it, then."

 

"As I was saying," he says, the tiniest bit accusingly, "Jack really likes you. But he doesn't know what he's doing. And neither do you."

 

"We're not some horny teenagers that you need to give the talk to, _dad_ ," Lula says, unable to keep the sarcasm down.

 

"Not like that. I meant that neither of you know where to go from here. It's not like either of you have a great history of long and stable relationships."

 

"I'm not worried about it, and neither is Jack."

 

"Isn't he?" Danny says softly. "You need to spend some time with Merritt if you can honestly tell me that you haven't noticed Jack acting differently around you."

 

Lula opens her mouth. Then she shuts it. _Could Danny be right?_ Jack has always just been Jack, been sweet and funny and sharp and sometimes clueless. But he's never been hard to read. Not for her.

 

"There's more to him than what you see," Atlas says. "Look more closely next time."

 

"I thought the closer I looked, the less I would see?" The retort is weak, and Lula knows it the second it crosses her lips.

 

"People aren't magic tricks, Lula."

 

"I know." She takes a deep breath and exhales, unsteadily. "I know."

 

* * *

 

 

Lula knows something's wrong as soon as she enters the living room. She knows this for two reasons: one, because Jack is holding the manor door wide open, which Granny had insisted it never be, and two, because Jack is standing still- the kind of stillness you never see in a pickpocket, no hand twitches or absentminded fidgets.

 

Something is very, very wrong.

 

"Jack?" she says, hand tight around her mug of tea as she walks towards the door. "Is Cthulu out there or something?" Her attempt at levity falls flat in the silence as she approaches to door.

 

"Lula," he says, the knuckles on the hand that's gripping the door a bloodless white. "This is my dad." Lula's heart stops and her feet freeze, but she's changed position enough to see the figure on the other side.

 

The two men look so similar that she almost does a spit-take, their features whirling until she sorts herself out enough to see that the stranger's hair is iron gray around a lined face, with a nose that doesn't quite fit and a mouth that doesn't seem like it would suit itself to Jack's soft smiles.

 

And they're just _staring_ at each other, frozen on either side of the doorway. The look on Jack's face is terrifying- blank and cold and motionless, miles from his usual warm laugh marks and coy glances. It's unsettling to the highest degree. So Lula does what she does best: butts into the situation.

 

"You're Jack's dad?" she directs towards the stranger. His eyes flicker over to her as he gives an almost imperceptible nod. "You. That's you. Okay," she says, setting down her mug. "Um."

 

Lula heaves back and slaps him.

 

It's mean to hurt, not harm, all open palm (and maybe the slightest bit of nail, sue her), but it makes a satisfyingly loud smack as it connects. Gratifyingly, her target staggers hard enough to be forced into a kneel, clutching the side of his face.

 

"Jesus, Lula!" Jack's let go of the door to pivot and face her. Lula winces, shakes the sting out of her hand.

 

"And here I thought I'd have to live out my life without this particular satisfaction. Thanks man," she says derisively, "really did me a solid there." Jack's worthless asshole _jerk_ father brings his hand away from his face to examine the pinpricks of blood her nails left.

 

"What the fuck is wrong with you, you crazy bitch?"

 

And just like that Jack's face goes all still and cold. "You should leave."

 

"Jackson, the _disrespect_ \--"

 

"You," Jack says, eyes hard. "Should. Leave." His dad draws himself up to full height- he's taller than Jack by a little, but somehow Jack's icy rage makes him seem small.

 

"Do you have any idea--"

 

"No, and I don't care."

 

"Give me another chance--"

 

"You had your chances," Jack spits. "You had so many, and you wasted all of them. I'm done with you." The older man hesitates, looks like he's about to say something.

 

"Just go, man," Lula says. "Go and hope we don't hypnotize you into thinking you're the shit-flinging monkey you really are."

 

He eyes the two of them warily, then turns and walks away. Jack slams the door shut, resting his forehead on the dark wood.

 

"Jack, are you--" She's cut off when he whirls around and kisses her, hard and insistent. Fluttering, her eyes slide shut.

 

He pulls away suddenly. "Lula, I l--" He bites his lip, looks away. "Thank you."

 

"Yeah," she replies. She searches his face for some hidden meaning, some secret message, but comes up short. "Anytime."

 

It's not until later that night, when his head is pillowed on her stomach and his fingers are playing with the loose fabric of her tee shirt that he offers her more information.

 

"He used to be a detective. That's probably how he found us," Jack says quietly.

 

"Your dad used to be part of the fuzz?" Jack snorts, mercifully.

 

"He was pretty good for a while, I heard, but he got fired and PI work didn't agree with him any more than drinking on the job did." He hesitates. "Lula, should I have--"

 

"You," she says slowly, firmly. "Are not obligated to let people who hurt you back into your life." Jack presses his face into her stomach as her fingers card gently through his hair.

 

"Do you think," she asks, "that maybe we should have hypnotized him into forgetting the location of the manor?"

 

Jack rolls onto his back to reply. "I was thinking about it, but no. He's not going to give us away. Petty stuff like that... it's not what he was after. He was after me, and exposing or location wouldn't get him any closer."

 

They lay in companionable silence for a while, Lula's hand absently fiddling with his hair.

 

"Thank you," Jack says suddenly, "for slapping him."

 

"It was my pleasure."

 

* * *

 

 

"The announcement will be tomorrow. We have to bait her out of hiding in her lab, and this is the only surefire way of doing it."

 

"For the last time, Dylan," Danny says testily, "it would make more sense to drop smaller hints and build suspicion before announcing. We might scare her into locking down the premises."

 

"A sudden shock is more likely to force her out-- if it's anything else, she'll just up her security and ignore it."

 

The two men had been arguing for what seemed like hours about how the announcement about the Horsemen's coming takedown of Koizumi. Atlas, always paranoid, was insisting that they do more recon first; Dylan was arguing that a bold move needed to be taken to press the weapons mogul into action. Merritt was cleaning the underside of his fingernails, thoroughly unimpressed. And Jack was being Jack. Which, as usual, entailed him standing a few feet off, his arms crossed and a pensive expression on his face.

 

His handsome, handsome face. Lula could look at it forever, really. But, as usual, the boys were in  dire need of a very loud voice telling them what to do, and Lula was all too happy to provide.

 

"Dylan's right," she says firmly. Atlas looks at her like she's just stomped his favorite teddy bear into the dirt, but she dismisses his outrage with a shrug of her shoulders. "We've been planning this for months now-- how much more information could we get from recon that would actually be new?" Danny looks ready to argue until Jack cuts him off.

 

"Lula's right," he says in that quiet way of his. Lula gestures expansively towards him with an I-told-you-so expression.

 

"Jack agrees with me." He gives her a small smile, just a twitch of his mouth, really, but it's accompanied by a strange distant look in his eyes that gives her a moment's pause.

 

_You haven't noticed him acting any differently?_

 

"Jack always agrees with you," Danny mumbles.

 

* * *

 

 

Danny's voice is his trademark cold intensity as he stares down the camera. "We're coming for you, Koizumi. Keep close tabs on us. Because the closer you look…"

 

"The less you see," chorus the other Horsemen. The lights on the camera flicker out. Atlas leans his neck to either side in an indulgent stretch.

 

"Back into the breach," he says in that tight way of his. "We'd better check to make sure the broadcasting worked." He walks off, his lingering annoyance at their timing showing in the tense line of his shoulders.

 

"He'll get over it," Dylan says as he watches Atlas walk out. "He's not used to hearing that people disagree with him."

 

Merritt snorts. "He's pouting, you mean." Dylan can only offer a shrug at the assessment.

 

Jack uncrosses his arms. "I'll go after him. Make sure he's not deliberately sabotaging it to get his way." He turns to Lula, brushes a kiss across her lips. "See you soon."

 

"Go get 'em, tiger." Her fingers manage to snag a small plastic package inside his jacket pocket, though. As he walks away, she looks and sees it's another cellophane wrapped Twizzler, identical to the half-dozen she'd already poached from his pockets.

 

 _He must really like Twizzlers_ , Lula muses as she pops it in her mouth, but frowns. _Can't remember the last time I actually saw him eat one, though._

 

But Twizzlers are her favorite candy too, so she doesn't let that niggling thought stop her sugar rush.

 

* * *

 

 

Lula can't quite pin why she's so terrified. She's perfectly safe. The manor is quiet and still, she's sitting cross-legged on the floor in Jack's room, and she's got a box of Twizzlers in her lap.

 

That has the receipt taped on top.

 

It had been fairly obvious from the beginning that he was baiting his pockets with debris to amuse her, but those were just meaningless scraps of pretty fabric or small tinkly bells. Jack probably just picked them up on an outing or intel mission. No big deal. But this- this is a box, probably from the store down the street, bought and paid for.

 

 _He snuck out,_ she thinks, trying to tamp down the rising panic. _He snuck out and risked getting caught and spent money just so I wouldn't be bored while taking all of his stuff._

 

And it wasn't a lot of money, or even particularly high-risk- the two of them snuck out all the time. But the act was just so horribly… _domestic_ , or something, like what a normal boyfriend would do for his normal girlfriend and then they would laugh and go live their normal lives and have normal sex and get normal married.

 

 _I'm not-- we're just sleeping together, it's not like we're a_ couple _couple--_

 

_Are we? Can we be?_

 

She needs to go outside.

 

* * *

 

 

That's how he finds her, sitting on the rooftop of the manor, box of Twizzlers by her side and empty wrappers scattered around her. Lula hears his footsteps as he crawls out the window and on to the mostly-flat portion of the roof, but doesn't turn, instead choosing to chew and swallow down the remains of the candy still in her mouth. But she's been eating them for the better part of an hour, and her mouth feels strange and empty without a slim piece of sugar between her teeth, so she reaches for another and manages to unwrap it before he reaches her side.

 

Jack doesn't say anything as he sits beside her, knees braced against the slight slope, so she takes it as an invitation to pop the candy into her mouth. It sits between her teeth like a cigarette.

 

(Jack had smoked, once, but she hated the litter and the stench and told him as much. Lula's not sure if he quit or just hides it well, but she hasn't seen him with a cig since.)

 

 They sit and look at the stars, sit and breathe and sit. The night sky is massive and glittering and silent.

 

Lula's never liked the quiet. "You really need to learn how to hide things better. This whole box was just sitting under your bed."

 

"Sitting in a _locked safe_ under my bed." There's no real bite to his voice now, not like before. The ice in Lula's chest melts a little bit.

 

"You were the one who taught me to pick locks like that, so really you should be proud." He laughs, one quiet exhale, and looks down at his hands. Then, for the first time since he climbed out here, he looks at her.

 

"You first."

 

Lula's brow crinkles in confusion. "Me first what?"

 

"Whatever you want to say, say it first."

 

Lula doesn't know what to say, a rarely-occurring phenomenon. Jack can be so _genuine_ sometimes, for a guy whose whole life was based on deceit, and Lula is embarrassingly bad at dealing with it.

 

"Why did you buy me these?" she blurts out, then winces _. Subtle, Lula,_ she thinks _. Really handled that with delicacy and grace._

 

Luckily, Jack doesn't seem perturbed. "You like them."

 

"Yeah, but you don't have to buy them for me. You don't have to buy me anything. It's not like-- I'm not expecting you to-- We're not--" She doesn't know what's she's saying, but the words keep coming, stumbling and unsure.

 

Jack cuts off her rambling. "But nothing. They're a gift, Lu. Just take them." A thousand snappy retorts flick through Lula's mind, but she can't quite summon the will to whip one out, not when he's looking at her with those sweet open eyes of his. So she settles with a nod, more to press down her own panic than to reassure Jack, and adds a gesture to the wrappers scattered in a circle around her.

 

"Consider them taken." _Deep breath._

 

"Good." He sighs, looks back at the stars. "Good good good."

 

"What about you?" He looks at her when she asks the question, tilts his head like a confused dog. "You said that I should go first, implying that you're going second, so what about you?"

 

"Right." He pauses, long enough to make Lula nervous. "Just… Merritt's been getting in my head about some stuff." He hesitates. "Stuff about us."

 

A jolt runs through Lula, the same jolt she gets whenever she thinks about real feelings and honesty and uncomfortable discussions. She has to tamp down her instinct to leave, to vanish off the roof and into the night and never see Jack again.

 

She can't do that, of course. She's a Horseman, now, and that entails dealing with whatever trials and tribulations that come. Even if they're in the form of Jackson C. Wilder looking at her all sad and troubled, like he's here to break her heart or gnaw his own leg off or something. So she summons a calming breath, shoves the panic down somewhere into her chest, and asks the question she really doesn't want to know the answer to.

 

 "And what sort of stuff was it?" He's nervous, hands winding together with the pickpocket's restlessness that she knows all too well.

 

"Just about… where you and I are going _."_

 

 _Oh_. He sends her a tentative look, eyes flickering across her face to try and read her features. _Say something._ Lula can't stand the look in his eyes, can't stand the way his gaze seems to x-ray its way under her skin. Her eyes flicker away, back to the shining night sky.

 

His stay on her. "So we should probably talk about that."

 

"Or we could not," she suggests unhelpfully. "We could just go back to fucking and not confront awkward emotional dilemmas."

 

"No we can't, Lula," he says, a note of exasperation creeping into his voice. "Not anymore."

 

He's right, of course- Jack is almost always right. That's one of the amazing things about him, how he can stare through a situation and see the truth, can see right past the lies and ruses and deceptions.

 

He's staring through her, now, staring right down to the bone.

 

"It's just so fucking fucked up, you know? Relationships. Like, you're just gonna be with this person like it's a forever kind of thing, except it's not, you're either gonna break up with them or marry them and half the time that doesn't even work out and--"

 

 _My mom literally stabbed my dad in the neck, once._ All of the sudden the crisp night air is biting painfully into her lungs, the stars are spinning with dizzying intensity, and the slope of the roof seems to careen downwards at an acrophobic angle. Her mother's face is flashing through her mind, the blood, the knife…

 

Lula blinks, hard, gasps for air, and scrabbles her fingers into the divets of the roof tiles.

 

"Hey," Jack says, pulling her tightly into his arms. "Hey, I've got you. Lula, look at me. I'm right here, I've got you. Look at me."

 

She looks. Every ounce of sincerity in his sweet puppydog heart is in his eyes right now, and it looks like a cradle, looks like heartache. Lula can't stand it.

 

Wiggling out of his grasp, she stands and backs away from him. "Jack…"

 

"Don't fucking do this, Lula," he spits as he stands to her level. "Don't just run away from me. Not after-- not after everything." There's fire in his voice, real fire, and Lula wonders briefly if she's finally baited the pup enough to snap. "I won't let you."

 

 _Well._ "Won't let me? Who the fuck do you think you are?"

 

"I'm the guy--" he hesitates, breaking eye contact for a second, "I'm the guy who's in _love_ with you."

 

Oh.

 

"Jack--"

 

"Let me finish. I'm in love with you, and I know you, Lula, and I know what you're doing. We're all magicians. We see unknown variables and we get the fuck out, because control is what keeps us going. But I'm not- _we're_ not one of the Horsemen's tricks. You don't have to run away."

 

"I'm not running away." His brow creases.

 

"Tell me to my face, then, Lula, exactly what you're doing."

 

She doesn't respond. She can't.

 

"I'm not asking for-- okay, I am asking for a lot. Just give us a shot, alright? A chance to be something real. But you have to really try, Lu. I don't want your play pretend. It's gotta be all in or all out. Don't say anything you don't mean." The fact that she never responded to his 'I love you' crystallizes in her mind, hard and bright. Like a knife _soaked in blood, the handle sticking--_

 

Lula squeezes her eyes shut. Counts to five, real slow, listens to her heart beat in the intervals.

 

"Alright," she says finally. "Okay, Jack. I'm in." His eyes are liquid, dark and smoky-warm when he looks at her, and her heart feels like it's either going to vomit or leap out of her chest. "I'm in."

 

He hesitates a few seconds before stepping close and kissing her, short and firm, his hands moving to cradle either side of her face. Hers flutter awkwardly around his back for a few moments before he steps away.

 

"Okay," he says. "Goodnight, Lula." Jack turns and climbs back into the manor. She waits a minute, stops to look at the stars one more time before she follows him in.

 

They're bright.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so.... ha. I've actually had this written for like, several months at this point, but I like posting my stories all at once so this never made it up because theoretically there's supposed to be a third chapter. which is realistically never going to be written, but who knows! enjoy these two, maybe follow if you're into the vain hope that years from now, I may actually get the mojo to write the finisher.


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